I have noticed that the bronze sphere that allows you to summon your companions is described as the "Stronghold" in the game files and as the "Hall of Relics" within the game world. Finding it also gives an achievement:

Always in Touch

Found the Hall of Relics

In the beta, the Stronghold is text-only and simply allows you to summon your inactive party members to your position. The wording of the achievement also suggests that the Stronghold is all about staying "in touch" with your companions. Will the Stronghold offer any further functionalities in the full game, or is it really just a summoning ball?

Serjo wrote:I have noticed that the bronze sphere that allows you to summon your companions is described as the "Stronghold" in the game files and as the "Hall of Relics" within the game world. Finding it also gives an achievement:

Always in Touch

Found the Hall of Relics

In the beta, the Stronghold is text-only and simply allows you to summon your inactive party members to your position. The wording of the achievement also suggests that the Stronghold is all about staying "in touch" with your companions. Will the Stronghold offer any further functionalities in the full game, or is it really just a summoning ball?

I hate this idea. What has happen to gamers? What is so hard about traveling back to an area and enlisting them into your party? This is just disappointing. The game only has 5 companions. Why would you really need to have them on standby anyway? Talk about a worthless and lazy feature.

anonymous6059 wrote:I hate this idea. What has happen to gamers? What is so hard about traveling back to an area and enlisting them into your party? This is just disappointing. The game only has 5 companions. Why would you really need to have them on standby anyway? Talk about a worthless and lazy feature.

It looks like you can't always travel back to where you dropped your party members, so there's some value to this mechanic.

However, since there's no shared xp pool for inactive party members, I doubt they're going to see much use after the first few hours of the game.

anonymous6059 wrote:I hate this idea. What has happen to gamers? What is so hard about traveling back to an area and enlisting them into your party? This is just disappointing. The game only has 5 companions. Why would you really need to have them on standby anyway? Talk about a worthless and lazy feature.

It looks like you can't always travel back to where you dropped your party members, so there's some value to this mechanic.

However, since there's no shared xp pool for inactive party members, I doubt they're going to see much use after the first few hours of the game.

What? Why wouldn't you be able to travel back to an area? I understand that it might be difficult to travel back and even time consuming, but what exactly makes it impossible? Also, if it is impossible for some reason, say an area is destroyed, then that companion should be dead. This junk of always having all the PCs on tap is really annoying. The point is to pick a party for a playthrough. Each time you play the game you have the option to pick differently. All this does is reduce the value of replaying the game. Why did I get my hopes so high?

The stronghold is the Calm. Throughout the game, different sections expand and grow over time. As you progress through the main story and make discoveries in the world, you will open up new fathoms to explore. You will also be able to uncover reflections of various NPCs, and solving their quests and engaging in their conversations lets you unlock and switch out various bonuses.

sear wrote:The stronghold is the Calm. Throughout the game, different sections expand and grow over time. As you progress through the main story and make discoveries in the world, you will open up new fathoms to explore. You will also be able to uncover reflections of various NPCs, and solving their quests and engaging in their conversations lets you unlock and switch out various bonuses.

Thank you for your reply. For me this was one of the most interesting aspects of the game and I'm happy to hear it has been implemented in great scale. People perhaps jumped to way too many conclusions too early.

sear wrote:The stronghold is the Calm. Throughout the game, different sections expand and grow over time. As you progress through the main story and make discoveries in the world, you will open up new fathoms to explore. You will also be able to uncover reflections of various NPCs, and solving their quests and engaging in their conversations lets you unlock and switch out various bonuses.

The features you describe in this post sound like the Castoff's Labyrinth stretch goals, which were unlocked before the "Stronghold" goal was reached:

Castoff’s Labyrinth Reflections: Reflections of Companions and NPCs are added to the Castoff’s Labyrinth. These Reflections have different dialog and information than their living counterparts, and you will learn secrets about them that would otherwise remain hidden. (But are these secrets really about them? Or are they about you?) The more Fathoms within the Labyrinth, the more Reflections there will be, and the deeper their dialogues become.

Lacunae: Not everyone in the Labyrinth has a living counterpart. Lacunae are figments of your mind that represent parts of yourself (or do they?). Through conversing with a Lacuna, you’ll discover puzzles and quests, and might even enhance your own abilities. As we delve to deeper fathoms, you’ll be able to find more Lacunae with whom to interact.

Castoff’s Labyrinth Secret Meres: Meres are added to the Castoff’s Labyrinth, these Meres (dependent upon the Fathoms) are hidden within the Labyrinth and are accessible only from your own mind.

And a developer comment in the beta files mentions that the Stronghold would be unlocked when you gain the bronze sphere, which happens long after the tutorial in the Calm.

Serjo wrote:
The features you describe in this post sound like the Castoff's Labyrinth stretch goals, which were unlocked before the "Stronghold" goal was reached:

Im not so sure. To me it sounds more like the Cast-off's-Labyrinth could be a part of the Calm. Like the Dungeon of Od-Nua is a part of your Stronghold in Pillars of Eternity.

And a developer comment in the beta files mentions that the Stronghold would be unlocked when you gain the bronze sphere, which happens long after the tutorial in the Calm.

I could be wrong, because i haven't played the beta so far. But the things i saw after the tutorial lead me to the conclusion that you cannot go back to the calm for a while. So the sphere could indeed give you access.